One More Game
by puddytat1972
Summary: Since Jack was a child, he had been one for fanciful stories and a vivid imagination. It was the very thing his elder sister loved about him as they grew up together. But Jack is a grown man now. Are his stories still so amusing?


**One More Game**

It had been many years since Jack had seen any of his family, and his most recent visit with Teague on Shipwreck Island caused him to start thinking about so many things that he had willed himself to forget over time. His fall from grace with Beckett and the EITC had not only ruined his own merchant sailing career, but also his family's thriving business in Bombay. While the business was never under the direct employ of the EITC, it worked closely with them, and therefore, was harmed severely by Jack's crime. His once prominent family lost face in the shipping industry and eventually with society, causing those family members who did not become imprisoned for debts to finally move away to other lands to start a new life. None of them bothered to keep ties with their wayward, bastard-born, merchant sailing failure-turned-pirate kin, Jonathan Sparrow, save for one. His youngest sister, Catherine, (although two years his elder) still kept in touch with him through occasional letters sent to Tortuga.

Now that Jack was left, once again, with no ship and no one left to help him chase his next dream, he decided to sail in his little dinghy to the Carolinas where his sister had settled just before her husband's passing. He had arrived at her home the evening before not knowing quite what to expect after all these years, but was greeted with the most sincere welcome that he had ever recalled receiving. The two of them were up well into the wee hours of the night catching up on each other's lives, and while Catherine seemed to enjoy all of Jack's fanciful stories of cursed gold, zombie pirates and Davy Jones, there was always a gleam in her eye that let him know that she wasn't taking them entirely seriously. She had known Jack since he was a babe, and she knew what kind of an imagination he had. She enjoyed it when she was young, and seemed to enjoy it just as much then.

By the next day, Catherine's initial shock and elation over seeing her long lost brother had subsided and the two of them were in her kitchen enjoying a quiet mid-morning breakfast of bacon and griddlecakes. Jack cut into his cakes with a proper knife instead of digging into them with the side of his fork as he usually would. It was amazing how quickly all the old ways came back to him.

"Would you like some tea?" Catherine asked as she removed the kettle from the stove. "It's the same kind Mum used to make. You liked that, didn't you?"

Jack smiled down at his plate as memories of his childhood came back to him. "I did. I'm nearly ashamed to say how long it's been since I've enjoyed a warm cup of tea. Seems all I drink anymore is rum."

"I was noticing that," she said as she set a cup down on the table near him. "Perhaps you should consider drinking a little less of it. I hear drinking too much can make one ill. Makes the eyes turn yellow."

"Nonsense, drinking is good for the soul."

"Not according to the Good Book, it isn't. You _do_ remember the Good Book, don't you?"

"Yes, the Good Book," Jack recalled. "There was a man by the name of Jesus Christ in there, if I remember, who was in the habit of turning water into wine. Good fellow."

"Wine isn't the same," she said.

"Why not?"

"It's made from the fruit of the vine, that's why not."

"So's rum...er, well, it's made from sugar cane," he explained. Catherine raised her brow at him. "It is! It's what you get after you've finished making all that sugar and molasses you ladies like to use in your biscuits."

"T'was meant to be thrown out, you mean," she laughed.

"Waste not, want not," Jack laughed with her then picked up a bottle he had sitting on the floor next to him. "Besides, if yellow eyes is all I need to worry about, I'll take it. I've been without rum before, and you've not known the meaning of the word ill until you've experienced what I have." He gave a shudder as he uncorked the bottle and poured a small amount of rum into his tea.

"Well then, you're already sick with it, seems to me," she said with a bit more seriousness, and she watched him drink.

Jack finished the cup all at once and set it down on the saucer with a loud clink as though it was a rum bottle on a countertop. He noticed his sister was still watching him and wasn't amused by the show. He smiled at her almost awkwardly. "Just like Mum used to make...with one notable exception, of course."

"Oh, I don't know," Catherine said as she finally looked away and began cutting into her own griddlecakes. "There was very little I'd put past Mum. She's where you get it from, you know. All this wanderlust and desire to do as you please."

"It is," he agreed. "And you too, I might add."

"I certainly have some of her traits as well," she conceded, "but I don't believe I ever had the wherewithal to do some of the things she did."

"You mean the courage?"

"That too. She was certainly a strong-willed woman. 'Tis a shame what happened to her," she said.

Jack shook his head slowly. "I hear consumption is a horrible way to die. One of my few regrets in this life is that I wasn't there for her while she had it. You know I would have gone if I had found out sooner. I'm certain I could have found some way..."

"Save the nonsense, Jackie," she interrupted. "You didn't visit her when she was alive. You certainly weren't going to visit her while there was an illness hanging over her house.

Jack said no more but began picking at his griddlecakes with his fork. Suddenly, he wasn't so hungry. Damn this woman. She was one of the few who could ever put him in his place like that. His mother had been another.

"Besides," she continued, "that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about what happened afterward."

Now, Jack was shifting in his chair. "Oh, that," he muttered. After an unbearable length of silence, he worked up the courage to ask, "Did the family ever discover who disturbed her grave?"

Catherine sighed, "No, we never did."

There was more silence while Jack ate a strip of bacon and pondered what to say next. Then he slipped a ring off of his finger and placed it on the table in front of Catherine. "Do you recognize that?" he asked her.

She picked it up and looked at it casually. "That's the ring she got from your father, isn't it?" Then she gasped and stood up suddenly as realization struck her. "We buried her with that ring! Jonathan Sparrow, you didn't!"

"No! No, I didn't," Jack said as he stood up with her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Please, love. I know I'm a scallywag, but give me more credit than that."

"Then where did you get it?"

Jack cleared his throat as he stalled to think of the best way to proceed.

"Tell me, where did you get it!" she demanded.

"My father gave it to me," he finally said.

"So, it was him?"

"Afraid so."

She was speechless for a moment, waving her hands around as though she was trying to conjure up something to say. Jack stepped back a bit, afraid she might try to strike him, but instead, she asked him in a voice that had to be forced out of her bit by bit, "What...why did he...what did he do with her... her head?"

"You don't want to know," he said quietly.

"Oh, but I _do_," she insisted.

Jacked sighed heavily and slowly reached beneath the loose ends of his sash. It took him a moment to find what he was looking for and remove it from his belt, and he could see the impatience rising up in Catherine's face. When he had finally loosened it, he pulled it out from under his sash and dangled it before her. It was their mother's shrunken head.

Catherine covered her gaping mouth with her hands and dropped down into the chair behind her, never removing her eyes from the grotesque object before her.

Jack reached out to catch her in case she didn't make it, but when he saw she was safely seated, he went right to work on trying to make everything right again. "I've no idea why he did it. He just gave it to me and told me to keep it. I'll tell you what, if you like, we can bury it in a nice churchyard somewhere, just you and I. No one has to know what happened to her. Or better yet, I can take it back to Bombay and... put it back."

"Where is that man?" she shouted as though she heard none of that. "You've seen him, so you must know where he is. I'll have him hung from the highest gallows!"

"I can't tell you," Jack said and braced himself for the impending wrath.

"No?!"

"No, sorry. Pirate's Code and all that."

"Oh, that's right. I forgot you're a pirate. Honor among thieves and all that foolery. Then perhaps I'll call the authorities and have them hang _you_."

"On what charge?" he asked.

"Desecrating the dead."

"'Twasn't me who did it."

"Piracy, then!"

"Where's your proof? I don't even have a ship."

"No, but you're the 'Infamous Jack Sparrow,'" she pointed out, reminding him of the way he had bragged about it the evening before.

"Yes, but _you_ happen to be a member of the infamous Sparrow family. You don't want the Company coming to collect its debt, do you?" That silenced her, but she was still visibly upset.

Jack's heart sank just a little, and he hid the object away as he considered what he might be able to tell her. "Teague's at Shipwreck Island guarding the Pirate Code. Even if you told the authorities, they would firstly never believe such a place exists, and secondly would never find it if they did," he explained to her.

"Good Lord, Jackie. Now's not the time for pirate tales."

"It's not a tale, Cathy. I've been there."

"Yes, I remember you telling me last night," she scoffed. "It was the Brethren Court, or some such thing, and you got together and elected a King, and went on to fight some squid-faced man on a ship of the damned. I remember the story well, and it was very amusing, but this is serious. We're not children anymore, and this is not a game."

Jack sat down and placed his hand over hers. "But I _am_ being serious," he said. Catherine pulled her hand away. "You still don't believe me?" he asked. Catherine shook her head and refused to look at him.

Jack looked around as though he would find the answer to his dilemma somewhere within the room. Instead, he found his bottle of rum again and took another drink. As he replaced the cork, an idea came to him. He stood up from the table and trotted into the other room.

"Where are you going?" Catherine called after him.

"Stay right there. I won't be a moment," he shouted back.

Catherine rolled her eyes and began clearing the dishes from the table. One thing she had always loved about her younger brother was his imagination and sense of adventure. It was the only thing that made growing up in a wealthy family under the shadow of scandal tolerable. But she had never expected it to last well into his adulthood as it seemed to have done. At some point a man had to face the reality that he lived in and learn to function within it. She feared that Jack was incapable of doing so, which would explain why he came to her doorstep the night before with little more than the clothes on his back, a bottle of rum, and some rolled up bamboo mat that he kept hidden under his coat until Catherine showed him to his room. It was that mat that he now carried in his hand as he returned to the kitchen.

"Cathy, look here," he said as he sat at the table and unrolled the mat in front of him. It was a circular chart of some sort with strange pictures and symbols written all over it. "This is the chart that Barbossa stole from Sao Feng. Do you remember that story?"

"Yes, I do," she said as she wiped her hands on a towel and returned to the table. "It was one of the less fanciful ones that I was more apt to believe."

"Aye, but do you believe it can take you to World's End and Davy Jones' Locker?"

"That's where you've lost me, I'm afraid," she said and sat down to take a look.

Jack started moving the concentric rings on the chart and lining them up just right. As he did so, new words and pictures began to form, sailing routes began to meet up in new places and land formations began to change. The very puzzle of the device caught Catherine's attention and she became intrigued by it in spite of herself. "There we are," Jack said when he was finished. "This is how one gets to World's End." He traced his finger along the only route line that remained solid. It appeared to begin at the Chinese coastline, while the end of it went to lands unrecognized.

"I see," she said, still not convince that this chart was anything more than the creative genius of a mad cartographer.

"Now look again," he said and shifted the rings some more. "Here's how you get to Jones' Locker from there."

Catherine watched as the picture became scrambled, only to match up again into something that resembled the previous chart, but continued to lands and ocean beyond its former edge.

"That's certainly a remarkable chart," she admitted, but she still wasn't convinced of its utility. "You say you followed this map to get to Davy Jones' Locker?"

"No, _I _didn't. Barbossa and his crew did. I followed it to get out." Jack moved the rings again. "See?"

"Of course." Catherine looked at it again but this time paid closer attention so some of its more unusual markings. "That's a rather impressive dragon drawn there. Was that the beastie you were telling me about?"

"The Kraken? No, that's Loong. He's harmless. And this one here," he pointed out another dragon-like shape on the map that initially appeared to be more land formations, but from another perspective, looked like a fiery serpent. "That's the giant P'an Ku. See how he makes up the mountains and hills? We sailed right past him on our way back from the Locker. Magnificent creature."

"I imagine he was, but isn't he dead?" she asked and looked up at Jack. Once again, she was drawn in by his stories.

"Dead, yes. But he hasn't ceased to exist," Jack said. "Where do you think all of China's beauty comes from?"

"Oh, right." She returned her attention to the chart and thought she could just make out some small words that were written across the rings before Jack moved them again. "Hold on there. I wasn't finished looking."

Jack didn't stop but continued rearranging the rings and lining them up in a certain order. "Remember how you said we weren't children anymore?" He paused and leaned back to get a good look at the chart, then adjusted it slightly. "What if we could be?" he asked. When he was satisfied with his work, he dropped his finger down on a symbol that looked like a chalice with an angel and skeleton hovering above it. The banner across the front read _Aqua de Vida_.

Catherine examined it only long enough to understand its meaning, and more importantly, Jack's meaning, before she burst into laughter. "Oh Jackie, you can't be serious," she said. "You don't honestly believe that the Fountain of Youth exists, do you?"

Jack kept the straightest, most serious composure that he was capable of and told her, "Yes. Yes I do. And do you know what? First chance I get, I'm going to find another ship and assemble a worthy crew to go after it. I'd have gone already, except I don't think that little dinghy I sailed in on is capable of getting me there."

When Catherine realized that Jack wasn't joking, she decided that a little reasoning might be in order. "You do realize you're not the first to go after this? Ponce de León spent many years in Florida doing just that, and he never found it."

"Florida is just one point in the journey, love. He never found it, because he never had this chart." Jack held his finger on the map where the sailing route ended in Florida while he moved the surrounding rings. Suddenly, what once appeared to be the Florida coastline opened up to become more sea. The route that ended there now continued further across the chart.

Catherine was more intrigued now and began seriously considering what this could mean. "You think it would really make us children again?"

"Possibly, but I've heard several stories. Some say you become a child again. Some say it will place you in your prime. Many think it will cure all your ills, while still others say it does no more than freeze you at your present age forever, so you never grow old and die. I say, if it does any of those things, it will be worth it." Jack picked up his rum bottle and raised it to her before taking another swig.

"Never die, you say?" Catherine looked off in the distance and twirled a stray lock of hair around her finger as she contemplated idea. Jack was amused that she still did that after all these years. Their mother used to swat her hand everytime she caught her. "I don't know that I _never_ want to die," she said after a while. "What about Heaven? Do you not believe in that anymore?" she asked as she turned to him again.

Jack leaned in closer to her and said, "Cathy, I'm not going to argue that Heaven doesn't exist. After some of what I've witnessed since I left the family, I don't question anyone's beliefs anymore. But I've seen what exists for me, and I swear by all that is sacred and holy that I will do whatever it takes to keep from going back. You may very well be going to Heaven when you die, but I am not."

Once again, Catherine was quiet and twirling her hair a bit more fervently than she was before. After a while, she smiled and said, "Imagine, the two of us as children again. Do you think we would be as unruly this time, the two of us together?" She laughed at the thought.

"We'd be a couple of orphaned street rats, likely as not," Jack mused with her. "But we'd be the wisest, most brilliant street rats out there and would have the rest of them working for us in no time."

"You always did imagine yourself to be someone great one day," she said.

"And with all the time we need at our disposal, it's bound to happen eventually. What say you, Cathy? Will you join me in one last adventure game?"

Catherine smiled and gazed at the chart. "I will, Jackie. One more game."


End file.
